An ultrasound system has become an important and popular diagnostic tool since it has a wide range of applications. Specifically, due to its non-invasive and non-destructive nature, the ultrasound system has been extensively used in the medical profession. Modern high-performance ultrasound systems and techniques are commonly used to produce two-dimensional or three-dimensional ultrasound images of internal features of a target object (e.g., human organs).
The ultrasound system may transmit and receive ultrasound signals to and from a living body to thereby form a 2D (two-dimensional) ultrasound image or a 3D (three-dimensional) ultrasound image. Various techniques have been studied to enhance resolution of the ultrasound image. Spatial compounding is known as one of such techniques.
The spatial compounding is an imaging technique for forming a compound image by combining ultrasound images. That is, the ultrasound system forms a plurality of ultrasound images and performs the spatial compounding upon the ultrasound images to form an ultrasound spatial compound image.
The ultrasound system disposes scan-lines set a virtual common point, at which a plurality of scan-lines intersect, and moves the virtual common point to a particular position to thereby set a plurality of scan-lines corresponding to each of the ultrasound images. However, there is a problem since a steering angle corresponding to a particular scan-line becomes very large and effects of spatial compounding in the center of an image display area for displaying an ultrasound image decrease.